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from what I can see on the backplane (PDF file), there are two RGBS inputs.

Because of the reasonable price of $2900, compared to the upcoming $4500 to $6000 products from Pixelmagic, Lumagen etc., it could be a very interesting scaler with full HD support and hopefully great video and film de-interlacing and scaling..

But let's wait for the first real units - marketing statements are patient (is this the right phrase? :) ).

I'm Tim, I'm CEO of Calibre so I ought to know the answers! If any of you came by our booth, I was the real big English guy!

I can confirm that Vantage-HD is a real product which really exists, what we showed at CEDIA was real, no tricks, no gimmicks. We ran four demos, two on our booth and two in the Silicon Optix HQV demo area.

On our booth at CEDIA we showed before and after using a genuine 480i NTSC composite video feed from a $90 Sony DVD player, direct into one plasma and through Vantage-HD to the other plasma via an RGBHV (SVGA) connection at the native res. of that plasma - 1366x768. The other feed on our booth was 1080i HDMI from a digital satellite receiver. Anyone who came by the booth saw real equipment really working. Yes, these were engineering samples, but there were no tricks or gimmicks.

At the Silicon Optix booth we ran a similar before and after demo using their HQV test DVD, but this time we took in YPbPr 480i and connected to 1024x768 plasmas and to a 720p Optoma projector.

Yes, we really are going into production in October. Yes, we really are a real company with 17 years of history supplying professional, aerospace, military, broadcast and medical markets and unusually we actually have our own electronics factory in the UK, we do not get our products made 'on the cheap' in China.

Lastly, I'd like to answer the question which seems to keep coming up about whether we support 1080p60 input. It is not on the brochure at present because we're very honest about what the product does - the current firmware does not support 1080p50 or 1080p60 input.

The hardware is capable of this, but that firmware has not yet been written. Our intention is to add 1080p50 and 1080p60 DVI/HDMI support as a future firmware upgrade, it is quite likely we might even get it done before we go to market with the product, but at the date we wrote the brochure we didn't have this working.

P.S. If you're having difficulty reading the brochure, try downloading the hi-res version, or send an email to us via the reply form on our website with your address requesting that we snail-mail you a very nice looking printed copy. {Note to forum administrator - I was trying to post a link to the Vantage-HD enquiry email address here but this message won't submit when I include it}

Hope you like Vantage-HD as much as we do - I've got a really dedicated team of engineers who have worked really hard to get this product right!

Thanks Tim, your input (regardless of whether it is 1080p50/60 or not :D ) is greatly welcome!

I've one feature question: Let's say I have a display which accepts 1080p sources with any progressive refresh rate (24p, 25p, 50p, 60p) and let's say the display is also able to show all of those refresh rates without needing to do any frame rate conversion. Now let's say I feed the Vantage-HD all kinds of source formats. Here's the list of what I could throw at it and what I would want the Vantage-HD to output:

1. Output formats - Vantage-HD is designed to convert arbitrary input formats to a fixed output format so as to best suit your projector/display. That's precisely why you should use a video processor. Trying to use a multi-frequency capable display device with all different resolutions is likely to reduce the effectiveness of Vantage-HD since you will inevitably end up with the display device's internal scaler/processor turned back on. To get the best performance, always set Vantage-HD to the native format of your display, both in terms of resolution and refresh rate, so as to ensure the display's internal processing is not running.

Vantage-HD supports per-input input configuration and one global output configuration since that's how it works best with your display device.

2. Price in Â£ - we are in the process of apppointing a UK distributor, at that point a Â£ price will be published by them.

3. Final answer on 1080p50 and 1080p60:

My engineers have today confirmed that the firmware does now support 1080p50 and 1080p60 via HDMI (or DVI with an adapter).

This feature was not present on the CEDIA units but will be on the production units when they ship.

What are the transcoding capabilities of the Vantage-HD (e.g. non HDCP-HDMI input to RGBHV/YPbPr)? Which resolutions?

Will the Vantage-HD have a Gamma-Equalizer with free defineable IRE points (10 or more) and adjustable R, G and B levels per IRE point (very important for an accurate display calibration of color balance and gamma tracking)?

1. Output formats - Vantage-HD is designed to convert arbitrary input formats to a fixed output format so as to best suit your projector/display. That's precisely why you should use a video processor. Trying to use a multi-frequency capable display device with all different resolutions is likely to reduce the effectiveness of Vantage-HD since you will inevitably end up with the display device's internal scaler/processor turned back on. To get the best performance, always set Vantage-HD to the native format of your display, both in terms of resolution and refresh rate, so as to ensure the display's internal processing is not running.

Vantage-HD supports per-input input configuration and one global output configuration since that's how it works best with your display device.

(1) All Panasonic plasmas support an internal refresh rate of 60Hz and 100Hz.
(2) All Pioneer plasmas support an internal refresh rate of 60Hz, 72Hz, 75Hz and 100Hz.

No refresh rate conversion involved! I believe NEC internally always uses 60Hz, but who buys NEC plasmas these days? Not sure about Fujitsu/Hitachi/Samsung/LG.

FWIW, the Crystalio II does support the feature I was asking for (settings per input format). Probably for exact the reason I'm explaining here.

P.S: To further explain my point: Here in Germany we'll get HDTV pay TV in about a month from now. The channel sais it will broadcast whichever format it gets, be it 24p, 25p, 60i, 50i, whatever. That means if I have to fix the refresh rate for my display to e.g. 50Hz, the Vantage-HD will have to do internal frame rate conversion for some input formats. Which is obviously bad, because my display is capable to natively show all formats without any frame rate conversion!

Using the video processor to do frame rate conversion is horrendous and will result in significant stutter/judder, it should only be considered when limited by the display. Any HD Ready display will at the very least do 50 and 60 Hz. It's the video processor job to match input and output refresh rates, not convert them.

Yes! This is what I want to know. If you read this thread, you will see Alan talk about some of the Terranex filters he wish were in the current first generation of HQV scalers. Will the Vantage-HD support similar filters and can they be made to be customizable?

How much is the SDI and or HD-SDI add on?

Your product does look good, so I will be keeping an eye on this it before I make a purchasing decision.

Extremely pleased to see you join this forum, and hope you are pleased that so many people, like myself, have dissected your spec sheets already, yet come back with many more questions. I particularly hope you will be able answer all of the questions by Madshi and Bejoro.

I noticed that Calibre already produce the SD/XGA PremierViewPro-AV scaler. That looks professional rather than domestic, but it seems to be made of the right stuff: